


Not the whole truth

by Hypatia_66



Series: Early days [16]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Berlin Wall, F/M, Gen, Stasi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 05:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17861477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: A difficult international situation. Illya has to find and deal with the truth when asked for help. Who is telling lies, who dares to tell the truth?





	Not the whole truth

Summer 1961

For Kuryakin, now working six months of the year in the decadent USA, it was strange to revisit old Berlin haunts. Very different from London or New York, West Berlin was consciously, boastfully capitalist, crudely vulgar and slightly desperate. The Eastern sector, on the other hand, was unchanged from its wartime destruction and decay but had its own increasingly uncomfortable quality. He felt watched wherever he went, even in one of the very few cafés, even in an empty street devoid of traffic.

In one of those cafés, he waited for a coffee. It took some time – the waitress clearly felt it was beneath her dignity to supply a fellow human being with a service, especially someone she suspected from his accent of being Russian. He watched the street through the window and observed a bicycle approaching.

The girl on it stopped outside and came in. She went through a less time-wasting procedure, being local, and sat at a nearby table with her coffee. The waitress disappeared. Kuryakin wasn’t given to flirting with unknown women but, curious to hear something about what was happening in the city from a local’s point of view, when she briefly glanced his way he smiled at her and gestured to the other seat at his table.

She noted the western clothes; he seemed harmless; she returned the smile but shook her head. “There’s no-one here,” he said and looked round to check whether any of the café staff were within hearing. “I don’t want to bring you trouble,” he said.

“Are you American?”

“No, but I work for an international organisation in New York.”

He was about to ask her about herself when she lifted her head to listen and turned away. Unsurprised, Kuryakin looked round and saw that the waitress had come out of wherever it was she hid to smoke a secret cigarette. He rose and went over to pay but added no tip, slightly fearful of having his ears boxed for being patronising, and left with merely a slight bow but without speaking to the girl. It was obviously safer not to.

<><><> 

Harry Beldon took the opportunity at a meeting of Section One heads in New York to invite their views on a recruit to the Berlin office, a young man of German birth currently living in the US, one Gerald Strothers.

“Perhaps we should meet him,” suggested Waverly. “It would be good for him to see how we operate here, anyway. Mr Solo isn’t occupied at the moment, he can show him around.”

*** 

Strothers turned out to be personable, though a little cold in manner. Napoleon Solo talked to him about the ethos of the organisation as they went round headquarters. Usually this would be a role eminently suited to the urbane American agent but somehow they didn’t hit it off. Solo thought his partner might have found him easier because they shared a cultural background and, in any case, _he_ wasn’t easy for Americans to get on with either.

But Kuryakin was in Berlin, returning from his service duties with the Soviet navy and delegated to keep tabs on the current security situation. Intercepts and rumours of forthcoming trouble abounded at Berlin’s UNCLE headquarters. Berlin’s communist East was haemorrhaging people. Now there was talk of the border being closed which was causing misgivings in the West.

<><><> 

It was getting late. Kuryakin, kept late at a meeting in the Eastern Sector, was walking quickly to get to the border crossing before midnight. A change of guard meant long delays.

A young woman, running and looking desperately behind her, bumped into him when he walked into her path. “Oh Gott, nein!”

“Was gibt es?” he said, catching her arm.

“Oh… let go! They’ll catch me.”

There was the sound of running booted feet. The man appeared to have very quick reactions. “Quick! Into this doorway,” he said, and pushing her into a dark doorway and pressing close up against her, he effectively hid her from her pursuers.

“Don’t take it personally,” he whispered, putting his arms around her, “but I think we’d better pretend to be lovers – do you mind?”

The footsteps drew nearer; she put reluctant arms round his neck, and two pairs of very dry lips met. A flashlight found and played on them, giving two officers the sight of a seemingly passionate exchange. Neither of the lovers paid any attention, just clung more closely as the officers continued on their way with a vulgar jibe and laughter.

The two in the doorway moved apart, a little embarrassed. Their eyes met. They smiled in recognition. It was the girl he’d spoken to in the café a few days before.

“Sorry,” he said. “Why were they looking for you?”

“I think I’ve killed someone – a policeman.”

The young man didn’t seem to be shocked. “What happened?” he asked.

She had approached guards at one of the crossings, she told him, and had been turned away; she didn’t know why. A police officer had then stopped her and demanded to see her identity papers. She was slow to find them, the street was deserted, there were narrow unfrequented alleyways. He dragged her into one and first beat her, then started fumbling with her clothing; she caught at his gun, pulled it from the holster clumsily and it went off…

“I see,” said the young man seriously. “What’s your name?” He smiled at her hesitation and said, “I can’t just go on saying ‘you’. And besides I just kissed you. My name’s Ilya Nikolaivich Kuryakin. I work for UNCLE in New York,” he added.

“That’s a Russian name – but you work for the West? How come? – Mine is Anja,” she added.

“It’s a long story,” he replied. “We’d better get out of here – we’ll go through the French sector crossing, it’s quite near.”

There had been hardly anyone about but now, suddenly, as they approached the checkpoint, they heard vehicles and shouts behind them and there were lights. A fellow UNCLE officer, Fritz Koch, came running to catch up with them. “Illya! I thought it was you. Something’s happening, listen!”

They turned and looked back and saw trucks arriving loaded with huge rolls of barbed wire. Then came the sound of road drills and men with pickaxes breaking up the road.

Khruschev had spoken. Close the border! And what the Soviet Union ordered must be carried out.

<><><> 

“We’d better get back to headquarters and tell Harry,” said Kuryakin.

“The intercept was right… We’re going to need passes to go between East and West Berlin, now,” said Fritz. “Didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” he added, grinning a little.

Ignoring that, Kuryakin said, “This Fräulein might need our protection to go through the checkpoint. We’ll take her through with us while we can.” Slightly surprised, his colleague nodded and joined him. The Eastern Sector guards now demanded their passports and credentials, an early indication of difficulties to come. Kuryakin indicated his colleague, pointed to the girl and said coldly, “Under guard.”

One of the guards looked at her ID. Kuryakin repeated, “She is with us, under diplomatic guard,” and stood coolly looking him in the eye. The noise from the drills behind them was becoming deafening. Distracted for a moment, the two guards looked at each other and shrugged. They waved them through to be met by the French guards who accepted them almost without question.

The two UNCLE officers led the girl away between them, continuing to act as guards until they were out of sight of the checkpoint. Fritz went on ahead at a quicker pace.

Anja took a gasping breath. “Thank you. You’ve saved my life.”

Kuryakin looked at her. “I hope so,“ he said. “A minute later and you might have been trapped. You’d better come to our headquarters for tonight.”

<><><> 

Before leaving her for the night, Kuryakin said, “Tomorrow I’ll take you to Marienfelde refugee camp.” He told her she would have to prove her identity and submit to allied and West German interrogation to check that she was not a Stasi agent. “You’re not are you?” he said.

“No… I’m not.”

He then left her and went to the signals section to check her story about killing a policeman. The story sounded plausible but he had been not quite convinced. There was no information available so far. The closing of the border had taken everyone’s attention. It was possible that the body had not yet been found, or even that the man was still alive.

Kuryakin returned to headquarters early the next morning and tapped on Anja’s door.

He sat down and looked up at her gravely. “Anja, the border has been closed and they’re building a permanent wall. No-one is being allowed through in either direction so I haven’t been able to get any information out of the Eastern sector.”

She stared at him. “What now?”

“It might be better for you to stay here for the moment. For your own sake I won’t take you to the refugee camp till your story is verified.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are concealing something from me, Anja. You must trust me and tell me the truth. What really happened?”

She sat looking at him. He was working for the Americans. He could be trusted, surely?

“Tell me… please,” he repeated.

She made a defeated gesture and said, “He was a Stasi officer. I was running away. He caught me. I _did_ get his gun and I fired it.”

“Deliberately?”

She nodded and dropped her eyes. “But I didn’t mean to kill him…”

“Why were you running away?”

“They made me spy on my student friends and report back. I did for a while, but I didn’t always tell the truth.”

“And they found out?”

She nodded. “They watch you, you know, to check. Everyone is watching everyone else, so they know what you’ve seen or heard and what you should be telling them.”

This part of Anja’s story was all too likely, but Kuryakin was reluctant to accept her word just because she was young and pretty. The American he was partnered with in New York might do that, but he knew better. In this he wronged Napoleon but nevertheless his own experience of life in the Communist East gave him far stronger understanding of people’s motivations. Napoleon wouldn’t have begun to comprehend the depths to which a state could sink to demoralise its citizens.

“Who was the officer?” he asked.

The name she gave, Strothers, meant nothing to him. He’d have to check with his colleagues… It occurred to him suddenly that maybe he couldn’t even trust _them_ in this and he might therefore need a fast answer to forestall any betrayal.

Napoleon. He _could_ trust Napoleon. The information that needed checking could come more innocently from New York headquarters.

“What happens now?” she asked, watching his face.

“I suggest you go down to the commissary and have something to eat,” he said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

<><><> 

Napoleon, wakened in the early hours, listened to his Russian partner. “All right, Illya, damn you, I’ll see what I can do. Give me an hour.”

He jumped out of bed and was on his way to headquarters in a surprisingly short space of time and, as traffic was fairly light before dawn, he was there quickly.

He put in a request for information and waited.

He was awakened from a doze at his desk when the telephone rang. “Solo,” he said a little thickly.

The closing of the border had made everyone sit up and listen to the signals traffic. Heavier than usual, his colleague told him, but he had spotted a single anomalous report, unrelated to it. “It might be nothing,” he said, “but someone has been found dead in strange circumstances. Someone of interest to us.”

“Who?”

“His name is, or was, Bernhard Strothers. He’s distantly related to an agent who has just been appointed to join UNCLE’s Berlin office.”

Napoleon’s antennae rose. “What else do you know about him?”

“He’s a high-ranking officer in the State Security Service – the Stasi.”

Like many as yet, Napoleon had only limited knowledge of the nature of this organisation, though even in America there were rumours. “So, our source is to be believed?”

“Looks like it, yes.”

“Thanks. I owe you.”

Now what? He’d have to report this to Waverly. Beldon and his new recruit had already left. He called Illya to tell him of the additional complication.

<><><> 

Illya received Napoleon’s report with composure. As an incident, it ought to remain low on the radar as long as he could get the young woman away before Beldon and Strothers arrived. And maybe before Waverly intervened.

“What will you tell Mr Waverly?” he asked.

For Napoleon, there was no question. He would report Illya’s request and the result, of course.

“And if he wants to know why I asked?” said Illya.

“It won’t be a lie if I tell him that a woman, who was there when it happened, thought she would be in danger and you helped her.”

“Thank you, Napoleon.”

“You owe me a dinner,” he said and added, “He’ll still want to know why you needed to ask. I’ll leave that to you, my friend.”

“It won’t be a lie when I say I needed to discover whether to believe her.”

<><> 

When Illya’s knock came, Anja jumped even though she had been waiting for it. He was smiling, which gave her hope. “Your dead Stasi officer has been found,” he said.

“Oh. Does that mean you can help me?”

“Yes, I think so, but there are complications so I will take you to the refugee camp right now, if you’re ready.” He looked at her seriously. “It’s probably a good claim for refugee status that you are running away from the Stasi, but you realise they will ask you questions about why?”

She nodded, fearfully.

“Don’t lie to them about your involvement with the Stasi. Tell them what you told me. That you were running away from possible prosecution by them. Just don’t mention that officer and especially not his name. Not to anyone.”

<><><> 

There were so many refugees, that Anja, just one among many, should be able to disappear into the mass of innocent or not-so-innocent escapees from tyranny. Kuryakin took her by taxi and immediately returned to Berlin Headquarters. There he ran into Fritz who was with someone he didn’t know.

“Illya, good morning! Let me introduce Gerald Strothers, our new agent,” he said. “Strothers – Illya Kuryakin who’s waiting to go back to our New York office.”

Illya had stiffened at the name. Strothers eyed the young man with antipathy, pained by his over-long hair and Russian name. They shook hands. “How long have you been in Berlin?” he asked.

“Not long this time.”

“He’s been in Murmansk, Strothers – six months. Part of the deal with the USSR,” said Fritz. “Strothers has just come from New York, Illya.”

Strothers, seeing a slight look of surprise cross Kuryakin’s face, said, “I met some of your colleagues there. A tiresomely smooth character called Solo showed me around.”

Kuryakin frowned.

“You know him, I imagine?”

“He is my partner.”

Fritz detecting a sudden cooling of the atmosphere, broke in, and said, “Where’s your girlfriend, Illya?”

“She isn’t,” said Illya, thankful for his laconic reputation.

“Pretty girl, though, didn’t you think?” the agent said, slyly.

“I suppose so, I didn’t really notice,” he replied, also thankful for his reputation for coolness towards women.

His colleague laughed and made a comment about life in submarines. Illya smiled reluctantly and shuffled his feet. He could put up with an unjustified insult rather than argue and cost someone’s life. Strothers looked contemptuous but Fritz wanted to know more.

“So, where have you hidden her, Illya?”

“She’s gone,” he replied uncommunicatively.

“Oh. I was hoping to get to know her.”

“Too late, Fritz.”

“Oh well. Come, Strothers, let’s get you settled in … Oh what’s this?”

A message was brought to him as they stood in the corridor. Fritz opened it and looked at Strothers. “Harry wants to see us,” he said. “You, too, Illya.”

<><> 

“Alexander Waverly has sent me a message,” said Beldon impressively, as if revealing the arrival of a tablet of stone. He looked at the three young men in front of him, noting their varying degrees of indifference and the very faint flush on Kuryakin’s cheek bones. “It includes some bad news for Herr Strothers, I’m afraid.”

Strothers looked surprised. “For me?”

“You have a cousin, I believe, in the Eastern Sector, called Bernhard?”

Strothers relaxed a little. “A very distant cousin, yes. I don’t know him at all.”

“Ah, then the news of his death will not be so hard to bear…” he looked up at them again. Kuryakin’s flush had died; if anything, he was pale.

“He was murdered on the same night that the border was closed… signals from the Eastern Sector confirm it.” His voice rose suddenly, making them jump. “What do you know about it, eh, Ilya Nikolaivitch – I think you know something!”

Kuryakin didn’t flinch or appear to be discomposed by the question. “Very little, sir. I heard about it last night – it was a short message from New York that my partner passed on as something of interest. At the time, it wasn’t of interest to me.” He glanced at Strothers and added, “The name meant nothing. I didn’t know that Herr Strothers had been recruited then.”

“What were you told?”

“That the murdered man was a Stasi officer, that’s all.”

“Who was the girl you and Fritz here brought across the border and into headquarters?”

Kuryakin blinked and raised his eyebrows as if this were a non sequitur. “Girl, sir? She was a young woman who wanted to escape to the West like all the rest. It so happened, the border was about to close so she was lucky to meet us.”

Fritz added, “Illya told them she was under guard – you know how intimidating he can look. It worked. They let her go with us.”

“Where is she now?”

“Marienfelde.”

“Her name?”

“What is this, sir?”

“Bernhard Strothers is thought to have been killed by someone trying to escape.”

Kuryakin laughed. “And you think that, among so many fleeing that night, that that girl…? … she couldn’t have killed a mouse. She was meek as a lamb, wasn’t she Fritz?”

“The female of the species, Illya,” said Fritz provocatively.

“I wouldn’t have thought she was deadlier than a Stasi officer,” Illya retorted.

Beldon interrupted. “Why did you contact Napoleon Solo last night?”

Without batting an eyelid, Illya replied, “I wanted to ask him something personal.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“That’s when he’s most likely to be at home.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard. But as a result he went into headquarters to check something for you.”

“Among other things, to discover when I’m likely to be allowed to return. And in the process, he heard this piece of information.”

“Hmph.” Beldon snorted. “Well, see if you can convince Alexander of your story, Ilya Nikolaivitch. You’re going back to New York today. Now, get out, all of you!”

<><> 

“So, was she pretty?” asked Napoleon as they drove into New York from the airport.

“Yes, quite pretty.”

“Maybe you should try that line on Mr Waverly.”

“He wouldn’t believe it,” said Illya firmly, and quite correctly.

“He thinks you should have left her.”

“Ridiculous. He wouldn’t have, himself. He’s not as hard as he likes to pretend.”

<><> 

Illya repeated this to the man himself.  “Sir, no-one should be left to the tender mercies of the Stasi. _You_ wouldn’t have let her be detained by them,”

Waverly grunted. His young Russian protégé was quite right, of course, but that was no reason for giving him the idea he could get away with murder – indirect murder, anyway.

“Where is she now?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir. I hope safe somewhere in West Germany.”

Waverly was a little surprised. “You haven’t tried to contact her?”

“No, sir. Why should I?”

Waverly gave up. This young man was nothing like his partner – which was probably why the young woman had trusted him. He was sure he hadn’t been told the whole truth, but what was truth? He frowned at Kuryakin who stared back guilelessly.

“Is any of this a lie?” Waverly knew as he asked it that it was a stupid question but he saw Kuryakin take it seriously and was reassured.

“None of it, sir… just, just… not the whole truth. It’s better that way.”

“All right. I’ll accept that, Mr Kuryakin. Don’t try to deceive me again.”

“I’ll try not to, sir.”

That air of guileless innocence would take him a long way, Waverly decided, damn him.

<><><><> 

**Author's Note:**

> The border between East and West Berlin was closed on the night of 12-13 August 1961, initially with barbed wire and torn-up streets, later with a concrete wall. After a chain of events which began in June 1989 with refugees escaping through Hungary to Austria, the wall was opened on 9 November 1989.
> 
> Stasi: The Staatssicherheitsdienst or State Security Service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It recruited thousands of ordinary people to spy on each other and caused lasting damage to many relationships among families and friends.


End file.
